iTunes Preview

EDITORS’ NOTES

One of the most talented guitarists to emerge from the UK for many years, the Scottish player Sean Shibe pays homage to another great guitarist, Julian Bream, who commissioned the 20th-century works here (and was an early champion of the music of Dowland, too). Walton, Berkeley, Britten, and Arnold were all inspired to write wonderfully inventive and strikingly original music for Bream, and Shibe approaches it as if new, revealing a strong musical personality and a jaw-dropping mastery of his instrument.

Dreams & Fancies

EDITORS’ NOTES

One of the most talented guitarists to emerge from the UK for many years, the Scottish player Sean Shibe pays homage to another great guitarist, Julian Bream, who commissioned the 20th-century works here (and was an early champion of the music of Dowland, too). Walton, Berkeley, Britten, and Arnold were all inspired to write wonderfully inventive and strikingly original music for Bream, and Shibe approaches it as if new, revealing a strong musical personality and a jaw-dropping mastery of his instrument.

About Sean Shibe

Just a few years out of school, classical guitarist Sean Shibe quickly made a major impact with a powerful, fully formed style and novel programming ideas.

Of Scots and Japanese background, Shibe was born in Edinburgh in 1992. He started the guitar as a youth, but nothing initially suggested the accomplishments to come: his instrument, he told the Scotsman, was a "20-quid guitar" his mother saw in a shop window and bought for him. His school happened to be giving guitar lessons at the time, so he signed up. He went on to study at the City of Edinburgh Music School (where he was the only guitar student) and City of Aberdeen Music School, but the moment of ignited passion came when he met with Allan Neave, chief guitar tutor at the Royal Conservatoire Scotland. The teenage Shibe moved to Glasgow to study with Neave, graduating in 2013 (he was the school's youngest undergraduate ever) and also taking classes at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Dance.

By that time, Shibe's career as a performer was well underway. In 2011 he won a Royal Over-Seas League award, and major festival appearances followed at Neuk, Lammermuir, and Brighton. In 2014 Shibe gave his solo debut at London's Wigmore Hall, and he became known for both Romantic concertos (Rodrigo) and those by composers exploring a more modernist idiom (Takemitsu). During this period he continued his studies with Paolo Pegoraro in Graz, Austria. Shibe made his recorded debut in 2015, performing guitar pieces by Peter Maxwell Davies on a Linn album of music devoted to that composer. His solo debut followed two years later with an album of music by 20th-century English composers surrounding a trio of pieces by John Dowland at the center. In 2017 Shibe toured China and developed his softLOUD project, a program of Scottish lute pieces juxtaposed with electric guitar works by Julia Wolfe and David Lang. ~ James Manheim